> Google is fundmentally broken, and has fundamentally broken the web.
Total hyperbole. Google's handling of SEO at worst breaks a web experience that Google created.
> In the old days we had paid search engines
I've been using TCP/IP since 1985. I have been "on the Internet" since 1986. I created the first open website in the Pacific Northwest in 1993. I don't remember ever, not even once, using a paid search engine.
Google is so entwined with the web that they've changed how people interact with and publish content.
Deep browsing sessions through layers of hyperlinks are dead. Instead people jump into and out of pages from Google, Twitter or HN. Personal home pages are dead, instead you need to publish to a platform like Medium or Twitter which will promote your content for you because no one is browsing anymore.
Now we have a world where the web pages primarily about companies (not individuals) create pages for Google (not people) as a way of juicing the search rankings so they can then get people in to download their mobile app.
In a nostalgic way, I miss the old web. But in a more pragmatic way I'm appalled at how inefficient this system is. If you wanted to design a way to index the world's information from the ground up, using toil and SEO spend as a proxy for quality and legitimacy (i.e. a million keyword heavy custom landing pages and bought backlinks) is a terrible way to do it.
It doesn't matter that Google created the monster that is SEO, thr fact is that it exists and it's how most people navigate the web.
Google creating AMP further breaks it and gives Google even more control. Google is very much the yelp of the Internet.
I understand where you are coming from being an 80s baby myself, however more and more young adults see google as the homepage of the internet, much as many now see Facebook as the internet to the point its where they consume most of their information.
I screamed about all this when Google became an ad machine. I screamed about it when Microsoft released paid DLC for the Xbox 360. Some of us railed, but the children...the children grew up thinking it was all normal and now its just 'how the world is' (SAAS/advertising/misinformation)
That's the real danger here. Companies outlast us and mold the next generation to see them as Deities of the world wide web.
Also- I do not remember paid search engines either.
Google certainly didn't create SEO. In fact their original search engine was notable because the SEO companies had not figured it out and for a couple of years the results were head and shoulders above competitors like Altavista and Ask Jeeves.
The only search engine that wasn't ruined by SEO was Archie. It was ruined by everybody shutting down their FTP sites.
Ah, Archie! I remember the joys of trying to find something by searching for filenames. 'Course, I was young enough back then that the idea that there were servers with stuff I could download made it fun enough to do it, and spelunk around the FTP site. I still remember a few common servers, like ftp.funet.fi. I don't have any idea what university it is, but I have a soft spot for Finland because of it. (That and being a child in Minnesota.)
I would prefer it if it was not necessary to learn "how to use Google". AMP makes that even more necessary than it used to be. I would prefer it if Google faced more real competition (DDG as I understand it is still fundamentally riding on the back of other lesser-used engines).
But "fundamentally broken" is hyperbole.
I think that "Deities" is also hyperbole. The people under 40 that I know regard Google as a corporation that does useful stuff, sometimes almost as if by magic, but not godlike.
I vaguely recall paying something like $20 for that back in the day. It's not technically a paid search engine I guess, but I wonder what the effect would be currently if there were some type of nominal fee required for all search placement. I think it would make it more difficult to generate massive amounts of blogspam.
Total hyperbole. Google's handling of SEO at worst breaks a web experience that Google created.
> In the old days we had paid search engines
I've been using TCP/IP since 1985. I have been "on the Internet" since 1986. I created the first open website in the Pacific Northwest in 1993. I don't remember ever, not even once, using a paid search engine.